Mitchells & Butlers

Established in 1898, Mitchells & Butlers is one of the UK’s largest employers.

With over 1,700 restaurants and pubs across the UK, they have a workforce of over 44,000 people. Their retail brands are household names including All Bar One, Browns, Harvester and Toby Carvery. However, with a high turnover of staff and a low profile in the job market their employer brand wasn’t performing as it should. Mitchells & Butlers needed to leverage their retail brand equity and reaffirm its USP for people.

Our task was to recreate and relaunch the Mitchells & Butlers employer brand with the aim of positively affecting recruitment and staff retention.

Starting with a new positioning statement ‘Serving with pride, since 1898’, we revised the entire employer brand, positioning Mitchells & Butlers as an employer that puts pride and great service at the heart of its business.

With this in place we redesigned all employer comms across print and digital platforms and set out new, comprehensive brand guidelines. ‘Serving with pride, since 1898’ is now at the core of all key brand elements, including an employee photoshoot capturing the large, diverse workforce going about their work with pride.

Following our work on the new employer brand we were asked to refresh the current Mitchells & Butlers staff recognition materials across their internal digital and print platforms. Mitchells & Butlers understand the importance of thanking their staff and these materials are designed for managers to know when and how to acknowledge a job well done. We reskinned their employer recognition website, a manager’s guide to recognition, plus bespoke items including a gift card and personal thank you card. We brought the warmth and personality from our brand guidelines into this work, renaming the previously unbranded work ‘Pride & Joy’.

“Good quickly grasped the values of our company and brought them to life in an engaging way. The response from employees has been extremely positive.

Liz Phillips, Director of Resourcing and Employee Relations, Mitchells & Butlers.